How to successfully launch or re-launch your campaign online

Posted on June 09, 2016

How to successfully launch or re-launch your campaign online

How do you get started when you're running for office for the first time, or re-launching your campaign for re-election? Here's our list to help guide candidates and would-be candidates during the crucial phase between "thinking about it" and launching. What you do now can give you the boost you need for a successful launch, and get you on track to win.

1. Your list is the heart muscle of your campaign. So strengthen and build it as much as you can before you launch.

You'll want to pull together all the old lists you have (especially important to log everything at the end of campaign so it's easy to reuse later). Even if you're starting from scratch, you have a list: your friends, family, coworkers etc. Now is the time to be combing through stacks of business cards and inputting the info, getting your personal email address book, work email address book, and your cellphone contacts all synched. You'll wind up using this list for your announcement email, and also for your initial fundraising call time sessions.

If you're not on LinkedIn, get on there and start building your professional network. It's a great way to get current contact info from people you may have worked with years ago but lost touch with. (And, pssst, you can download your contacts' email addresses via LinkedIn, which you cannot really do with Twitter or Facebook. Note that you can download name/email/company via LinkedIn but you cannot mass download phone #s and addresses - you'll need to spend some time on LinkedIn copying that info down by hand, just like with Facebook.)

Also reach out to people who support you, who may have access to lists. If you're running for an office held by a Republican, try to get the supporter list of the last Democrat who ran for that seat. Other previous campaigns for city, county or congressional office can be cobbled together to cover a larger district (especially the parts that have strong Democratic preference). And of course the state party may be able to help you if there's no primary (if there is, it's even more important to make friends with other local Democrats who have run and won elections in your district - ask for their endorsement and their list). Take advantage of this by reaching out before you launch to see what resources are available. Also try reaching out to sympathetic organizations, especially organizations that may have endorsed you in the past. Maybe they will be willing to give you a boost by emailing their list about you.

Now is also the time to get on Twitter and Facebook, if you are not yet already, and get active to build out your social media contacts. If you have old inactive campaign accounts, it's time to reactivate them. If you're all in, it's possible to convert a personal Facebook profile into a page. This will give you a jumpstart in fans and also erase any past (potentially embarrassing) content. If you choose to maintain a separate personal account for friends and family, a page will still give you another way besides email to reach out to your circle. More from our getting started on social media guide.

Buy your domain names now (and make sure they're set to auto-renew so you won't ever lose control of them). If you wait till rumors are out there that you're running for office or re-election, squatters could grab your domain and refuse to give it back unless you pay expensive prices. Or your opponent could buy it, which is worse. So buy them now.

What domains should you get? For a campaign, every combination of your first and last name, including nicknames (jim, jimmy, james, etc) might be useful, and be sure to purchase the trifecta of common urls: .com/net/org. Domains are cheap but not buying a domain can be costly. The last thing you want is to save $10 by not buying a jimmy.com, because you go by James, only to have your opponent put up an attack-site a few weeks later at "jimmy.com" that spreads all kinds of lies and falsehoods about your past, which now you have to spend thousands of earned media dollars to rebut.

Defense aside, what domain should the campaign use? I highly recommend making sure your full name is in your domain, because this will help with search engines. Read more from our search engine optimization guide for political campaigns and non-profits. Hopefully your name is easy to spell. If it isn't, be sure to buy misspellings. And perhaps use a simplified URL when you're giving speeches.

I would not recommend a domain with the year in it, because once you've built up some search engine credibility, you'd need to ditch that URL for another one in a different year and have to start from scratch.

In terms of social media and naming, while it may be possible to make a 1-time change of your URL or page title on Facebook and unlimited changes of your Twitter username - don't assume you can do this. The internet is littered with one-time-use campaign social media profiles. If you're under 90 years old (or heck, even if you are 90), choose a Facebook page title and URL (aka username) that won't tie you down to running for a specific office in a specific year - we all know that politics is about the long game. And some of the most successful politicians in history had to run more than once before they got elected to office. So use your name, your full name, this will help with search engine work in a few days and it might help your career in public service for years to come.

3. Get updated professional head shots.

These are the pictures that will be going on the website, social media, newspapers may be running it in their stories, they could wind up on your mail pieces etc. Now, while you have the time, get good pictures. Trusting a friend to snap something flattering on an iphone just isn't going to hold up. Also your headshots from 4 years ago probably aren't going to cut it, get fresh ones that look like you.

4. Get a professional logo.

Assuming you don't already have a good logo from a previous campaign. Get it done right, at the beginning, and it will help with branding and last you throughout the campaign. Make sure to get high res and vector versions you can use for print ads, TV etc. It's worth investing in the thing people will most associate with your campaign, other than your name. Also note that if you want to build your campaign brand for the long term, stay away from any logo that will look too 'dated' in a couple years.

You need a way to email the hundreds (hopefully thousands or tens of thousands) of people in your network about the campaign. If you have no money, look at MailChimp or Action Network-- if you have some money, the CRMs under #5 above. They are systems built specifically for campaigns, something cobbled together built for private industry is just not going to work as well for your unique needs. Prices are affordable and there are deals available through the DCCC, DLCC etc. This tool is going to be like your car - it will work every single day to get you where you need to go: talking to voters, raising money, meeting the people you need to win your race. It's worth kicking the tires on a few and picking something reliable that will see you through the busy weeks ahead..

7. Have a simple splash page up on your website at a minimum when you announce.

It should say a little bit about you, have a donate button (see #5), email sign up (see #6), and social media links (see the end of #1). That's enough to get you started and you can work on a full website later, when your campaign has money and you have a sense of how the race is going. When you're ready for that, check out our guide to a successful website for campaigns and non-profits!

8. Get ready for launch day.

You want to be able to pull the trigger on all this stuff more or less simultaneously on launch day, with no dropped balls. So it will take some prep work beforehand.

You need to have your social media accounts set up (make sure they're private until launch day), have your website or splash page ready (but not public) and donation processing set up.

You should write your announcement email and have it ready to send to your full list the hour you kick off.

You need to get your press release ready, and build your list of press contacts ahead of time so you have somebody to send it to.

Don't forget outreach to state and local bloggers, and online personalities in your district with large social media followings!

Good luck! Having all the pieces together will mean a smooth launch, lots of money and supporters raised, and good press -- NOT bad for a first day. If this is your first time as a candidate or it?s been a long time since you?ve run a campaign, check out the affordable candidate trainings offered by Wellstone, DFA, EMILY's List (for pro-choice women) Emerge (for women, only in some states), and Victory Fund (for LGBT). Progressive Majority has a great campaign manual available on their website too!

Originally posted on the PowerThru blog.Laura Packard is a Partner at PowerThru Consulting, a national full-service digital strategy shop for Democrats and progressive non-profits. Laura can be reached at laura@powerthruconsulting.com or 202-525-7697. Follow Laura on Twitter at @lpackard and PowerThru at @power_thru.